A historic southern Ontario creamery that housed Canada’s largest independent ice cream manufacturer has been destroyed by fire, Toronto-area media reported Friday.
Chapman’s Ice Cream produced ice cream and dairy-free alternatives for markets across Canada in the 150-year-old building at Markdale, about 90 km west of Barrie.
Vice-president Ashley Chapman was quoted by the Canadian Press as saying the fire was ignited Friday morning by a spark from a welder working on an expansion project. No one was reported as injured in the blaze.
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About 60 homes on the west side of the community were evacuated to the local arena by Ontario Provincial Police due to smoke from the fire, CTV reported. Some patients were also evacuated from a nearby hospital, CP said.
Chapman’s has already pledged to rebuild at Markdale, CTV said.
A note on the company’s website home page Friday said Chapman’s “will be conducting business as per usual. Your continued support is important to us as we move forward.”
On its site, the company has previously said “we’ll never outgrow the community of Markdale, Ont. in which we live and work.”
Chapman’s dates back to 1973, when David and Penny Chapman bought the creamery building, producing and distributing ice cream with four employees and two trucks at a time when “three major corporations dominated the ice cream market in North America.”
Since then, the Chapmans said on their site, the Markdale facility has gone through “several upgrades,” including two separate expansions for its distribution centre, now covering about 140,000 square feet with capacity for “six million units” of ice cream.
CP quoted Chapman as saying orders would be filled through the company’s distribution centre as the plant is rebuilt.
The facility’s other expansions have included a “self-contained” garage to maintain a fleet of over 60 trucks that deliver product across Canada, as well as a 28,000 square-foot warehouse for dry ingredients, and an in-house wastewater treatment facility “so as not to burden the municipal system,” the company said.
According to CTV on Friday, the OPP had issued a mandatory boil water order for residents, “as the firefighting taxed the village’s water supply system.”
